Mary McAleese: My shock that Bishop Casey was a paedophile
Former president expresses sorrow for victims forced to live in silence
MARY McAleese has said the Church protected clerical abusers including alleged child abuser Bishop Eamonn Casey through ‘false deference’, allowing them ‘a sanctity that was never theirs’.
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday, the former President said she once worked with Bishop Casey and was ‘shocked’ by the revelations this year that he was accused of child sexual abuse by four different women.
Mrs McAleese said she felt ‘sorry’ for his victims ‘knowing that they must have lived lives of appalling, appalling silence’ and praised all victims of abuse for speaking out.
The MoS exclusively revealed this March that two women who accused Bishop Casey of child sexual abuse received substantial payments, including one under the Redress Board, while another received a confidential six-figure settlement.
This newspaper also revealed for the first time the details of alleged abuse by Bishop Casey of his niece Patricia Donovan, who claims she was raped and sexually abused by him from the age of five for more than a decade.
Bishop Casey’s name is among those referenced on files under the Residential Institutions Redress Board, which the State is now controversially proposing to seal for 75 years under the Retention of Records Bill.
Mrs Aleese, who has just been appointed Chancellor of Trinity College Dublin, told the MoS: ‘There are many, many like him [Bishop Casey] who lived a lie, and they were facilitated in that lie with false deference, with the cloaks the Church uses to cloak people like him in a kind of a sanctity that was never theirs.
‘We have learnt enough nowadays to be sceptical and to poke at that false deference to make sure we are not being fooled.’
Asked about her reaction to the allegations of abuse against Bishop Casey, she said: ‘I was shocked. I worked with him at the Episcopal Conference. Absolutely. Would I be shocked enough to say it wouldn’t happen? Absolutely not. Nowadays it’s very hard for any of us to be so shocked, but I was shocked and I felt so heart sorry for those who said that they were abused, and knowing that they must have lived lives of appalling, appalling silence; knowing that to say it they run the risk of being excluded or shunned, because that’s the way it works.
‘One of the desperate things is that not only is the abuse itself creating victims, but the person who abuses them is untouchable. We have to make them all very, very accountable, very touchable.’
The allegations against Bishop Casey followed a nine-month investigation by the MoS, some 27 years after the Annie Murphy revelations that he had fathered a child.
While it was known that a relative of Bishop Casey’s had made a complaint to gardaí against him, her identity and her claims were never publicly revealed until Ms Donovan spoke at length to the MoS.
Asked about her bravery and that of other survivors who expose their perpetrators, Mrs McAleese said anyone who has the courage to speak out deserves to be praised.
‘We know from the past of the Ryan report, the Murphy report and all the reports into the various diocesan abuse situations, we know how very often victims were first of all led to believe that they were alone, that nobody else experienced this and that they were afraid to talk out because their abuser had made them feel that they were in some way to blame, so when someone who is a victim has the courage to stand up, we have to say “Well done”.’
‘There are many, many like him who lived a lie’